1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to technology for storing shared text data encoded in a structured document format.
2. Description of the Related Art
As an access control technique of a shared resource for access controlling a text shared by plural users according to an organization rule and authority of a user, there is available a technique used in a general-purpose operating system such as the UNIX (registered trademark) (for example, see The UNIX Super Text (Part 1), p. 96 “9.2 Attribute”, Edited by Kazunori YAMAGUCHI, Gijutsu-Hyohron Co., Ltd.). The access control technique used in the UNIX has the following advantages. In a file present in the UNIX control of various kinds of operations including (1′) execution, (2′) reading, and (3′) writing can be set to each of (1) the owner, (2) other users included in the group to which the owner belongs, and (3) other users. Therefore, this access control technique is used in the access control of the file management system.
However, the technique described above is only one of access controlling techniques in a file unit. Accordingly, when one file has many pages or is a large-scale file such as a file including a shared text prepared by a group, a shared translation, a shared preparation of a text, and preparation of a house design drawing, as often observed in the recent office environment, even when each person in charge needs to access control a page or a position (area) for which this person is responsible, the person can access control in only the file unit.
Consequently, based on the above technique, each user cannot access control a part of a large volume of pages or a part of a large-scale image, and the technique cannot satisfy the user's requirement.